A Poetry Friday Field Trip

My summer project: revising my middle grade book, "We Rule the School: A Fifth Grade Yearbook."

It's a combination of "self-portrait" poems & occasional poems that cover one year in the life of a central-Maryland fifth grade class.

Here is one of the occasional poems, written in the voice of two boys in the class. They're on their way to Mt. Vernon for a field trip.

Send comments! (Pls. ignore references to other characters for now. You'll have to wait for the book!)

Bus-ting Out: Field Trip Poem

It’s Thursday but we got no school.
We’re on a field trip, hey that’s cool.
Where we going? George Washington’s place.
Gonna see the fake teeth he wore in his face.

Harry’s in the back row drumming a beat.
Girls Miss Mary Macking between the seats.
Chaperones up front chatting away.
Gray Torres snuck his DS and we all wanna play.

Miss Hill wearing jeans, first time this year.
There’s Nationals Stadium – everybody gotta cheer.
Ashlie Hauk singing a song we all know.
Jason Chen beat boxes. He got the flow.

Uno cards flying when we hit a pot hole.
Waving at the White House and the National Mall.
Girls text the boys, making a fuss.
Best part of a field trip is riding the bus.

(My book, "We Rule the School," owes a lot to Edgar Lee Master's Spoon River Anthology. I'm a huge fan.)

Our host for this week's Poetry Friday is Kelly Herold at Crossover. Have a great first weekend of summer.